The question of whom was Jonathon E. Caldwell and how he could have disappeared so completely from society was a mystery which baffled the author for almost three years. So little information could be unearthed, only scraps of newspaper accounts which had been quickly denied. And then in November of 1978 a break came in the case of the missing inventor, Jonathon E. Caldwell, who had been 37 years of age when last seen or heard publicly. He would be close to 80 years old today. Was he the one to whom we had established a vicarious attachment and to whom we had dedicated this book - before we were certain he existed or was still alive?

The American who was to become the world's greatest genius in the field of aerodynamics, and who invented the world's first round wing plane which millions of viewers have labelled UFO's, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1899.

His name one day would become greater than the Wright Brothers and the city of St. Louis where he was born would gain an even greater fame in years to come than had been bestowed on the city by Charles Lindberg when he named his historic aeroplane that took him across the Atlantic, The Spirit of St. Louis.

20But before Jonathon E. Caldwell was to become pre-occupied with a vision of how man could overcome his own absence of wings, World War I would break out. To Caldwell, the war would be a chance to fly aeroplanes, and 1917 would see him volunteering for the service of the United States Army where his training at Kelly Field, Texas in fixed winged by-planes would be a forerunner for overseas duty in France. Caldwell came out of the service a lieutenant in 1918. He rejoined the Army/Air Corps Reservists in the summer of 1921 and again found himself stationed at Kelly Field with a small group of World War I fliers who had returned for retraining and to brush up on their flying ability.